All Our Worldly Goods by Irene NEMIROVSKY

In haunting ways, this gorgeous novel prefigures Irène Némirovsky’s masterpiece Suite Française. Set in France between 1910 and 1940 and first published in France in 1947, five years after the author’s death, All Our Worldly Goods is a gripping story of war, family life and star-crossed lovers. Pierre and Agnes marry for love against the wishes of his parents and his grandfather, the tyrannical family patriarch. Their marriage provokes a family feud that cascades down the generations. This brilliant novel is full of drama, heartbreak, and the telling observations that have made Némirovsky’s work so beloved and admired.

Irène Némirovsky was born in Kiev in 1903, the daughter of a successful Jewish banker. In 1918 her family fled the Russian Revolution for France where she became a bestselling novelist, author ofDavid Golder,Le Baland other works published in her lifetime or soon after, as well as the posthumousSuite FrançaiseandFire in the Blood.In July 1942 she was arrested by the French police and interned in Pithiviers concentration camp, and from there immediately deported to Auschwitz where she died in August 1942.

Unrated Critic Reviews for All Our Worldly Goods

Book Reporter

ALL OUR WORLDLY GOODS is about the many perceptions of the villagers of Saint-Elme, spanning the entire natural course of Pierre’s adult lifetime as his country ages right along with him, taking Pierre through the many stages of human life as he fights and experiences the changes within France ov...

The Telegraph

Defying convention and the wrath of the domineering Hardelot paterfamilias, grandfather Julien, they marry, have a child, and make a life away from Saint-Elme, before the outbreak of the First World War sweeps Pierre into the army and forces Agnès to return to Saint-Elme and its rigid social conv...

The Telegraph

"If I want to create something striking, it is not misery I will show but the prosperity that contrasts with it," wrote Irène Némirovsky in the preparatory notes to Suite Française, her unfinished and long-lost masterpiece.

The Bookbag

It is there as background but the book's main thrust is love - forbidden love, the love of parents for their children, married love and love of place - but above all the message that love does triumph.

California Literary Review

Pierre Hardelot meets a steely response from his grandfather, Julian Hardelot, the head of family and fortune, who will not relent, demanding that Pierre forfeit his inheritance for this disrespectful act.